Dave Ramsey calls it a Legacy Drawer. My husband, Tom, calls it a Doomsday Sheet. Whatever you decide to call yours, you must have one. I’m talking about a summary of financial info that your family would need if anything were to happen to you.

I know you don’t want to think about this. No one wants to think about it.

But if you’re the one who pays the bills, manages the savings and investments, and knows where the life insurance policies are kept, then imagine your family’s despair if – on top of all they’d be going through – they have to play financial detective in order to keep that side of things running too.

In case you think I’m speaking from a place of superiority, having done this long ago for my husband, I’m not. I finally got around to it this week, and at his urging.

He realized that the days of getting paper bills in the mail and pulling out the checkbook and stamps to pay them were long gone. How would he know what was due? And how to get into all our accounts?

So while I was still in number organizing mode from having gathered our tax stuff for the CPA, I sat at my computer and opened a Word document to type out all the details he’d need.

I started with my email login and password because that’s how most of our financial correspondence gets to us.

I went on to list the account numbers and login info for everything I could think of:

Bank accounts

Credit card accounts

Investment accounts

Mortgage

Health Insurance

Next I wrote out how everything gets paid:

For some things (utilities mostly) we still receive paper bills in the mail and I use our bank’s bill paying service to pay them.

Others (life, health & disability insurance, newspaper subscription, church tithe, and our Unbound sponsorships) are automatically debited from our checking account. So is Grant’s college bill, and you have to sign up for this arrangement at the start of each semester so more login and password info was needed there.

Our cable bill is automatically charged to our credit card in order to get the cash back.

Since I do the books for Tom’s business I included all of that detail too. Plus account and login info for my blogging side gig. (Those things were necessary because we’re self-employed. Other families will need to include employee benefit info. Are there accounts to log into? How much life insurance is through work? And who in the human resource department can provide guidance?)

It turns out there was a lot of detail. It’s stuff I’ve done for so long I don’t even think about it, but it would be frustrating for someone to have to figure it all out in my absence.

Once I was done I printed off a copy of the info for Tom to keep in a place that makes sense for him. I included another copy in my office where the financial paperwork is kept.

And I resolved to keep it updated. Tax season seems like a good time to do that each year. Maybe I can link the two together like Daylight Savings Time prompts us to change the smoke detector batteries?

This undertaking was done with Tom in mind, but it was a good exercise for me, too. Specifically, having everything in one place has me looking for ways that I can simplify. Should I

Reduce the number of accounts we have?

Streamline bill paying?

Outsource the business payroll? (Payroll would be especially difficult for Tom to have to suddenly tackle. Other things could wait a bit, but employees need to be paid.)

I knew this would be helpful to him, but I didn’t realize it would benefit me as well.

So now I challenge you to do the same.

And this task is important for families of all kinds. Don’t think you’re off the hook if you’re a family of one. Even singles need to put together something that will guide those responsible for sorting things out the financial details.

And what if you’re one of the few reading this blog who is not the family numbers nerd? Someone else is responsible for all the bill paying and paperwork? Then you need to ask that person to do this for you. And keep after them until they do.

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“If you will just say, five years from today I am going to be a completely different person financially you can be.” – Dave Ramsey

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